". . . besides love, independence of thought is the greatest gift an adult can give a child."

"Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it."

"First with the head, then with the heart."

"The name 'Boss' started with people that worked for me... It was not meant like Boss, capital B, it was meant like 'Boss, where's my dough this week?' And it was sort of just a term among friends. I never really liked it."

"I have to write and play. If I became an electrician tomorrow, I'd still come home at night and write songs."

"Now everyone dreams of a love faithful and true, But you and I know what this world can do. So let's make our steps clear so the other may see. And I'll wait for you...should I fall behind wait for me."

"I had a ten-piece band when I was 21 years old, the Bruce Springsteen Band. This is just a slightly expanded version of a band I had before I ever signed a record contract. We had singers and horns."

"You can't start a fire Worrying 'bout your little world falling apart This gun's for hire Even if we're just dancing in the dark"

"You need two things to remain very, very present. You need to continue to write well and engage yourself in the issues of the day. And you have to continue to make good, relevant records."

"I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day."

"I'm not in any rush. I'm not somebody who, if I write a song, I get it out. That's not something I've ever really quite done."

"When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that's what other people who I admired did. That's what Bob Dylan did, that's what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways."

"An outgrowth of having a long career is that I have a lot of interesting things around that I get to revisit, and someday get to the place where they become something that I want to do next."

"If I have a song that I feel is really one of my best songs, I like it to have a formal studio recording because I believe that something being officially released on a studio record gives it a certain authority that it doesn't quite have if it comes out on a live album or is just a part of your show, you know."

"Work creates an enormous sense of self and I saw that in my mother. She was an enormous, towering figure to me in the best possible way. I picked up a lot of things from her in the way that I work... I also picked up a lot of the failings of when your father doesn't have those things and that results in a house that turns into a minefield."

"I think politics come out of psychology."

"But the star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention."

"I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention."

"Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you've ever heard."

"If they had told me I was the janitor and would have to mop up and clean the toilets after the show in order to play, I probably would have done it."

"In America everything's about who's number one today."

"The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with."

"Build this day on a foundation of pleasant thoughts. Never fret at any imperfections that you fear may impede your progress. Remind yourself, as often as necessary, that you are a creature of God and have the power to achieve any dream by lifting up your thoughts. You can fly when you decide that you can. Never consider yourself defeated again. Let the vision in your heart be in your life's blueprint. Smile!"

"There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write."